Bruno Pontiroli is a French artist that paints a world turned upside down, in which the laws of physics are distorted and nothing is as it should be.

He grew up in the south of France, and he also spent a few years in Guadeloupe.

«My aim is turn the narrow vision that we have of the world upside down and disturb our imagination while shaking an accepted reality with images that are as comprehensible as they are familiar.

Distorting a symbol or mixing opposing universes allows me to question the identity of things so that I can reinvent them.»

"L'histoire à dormir debout / El cuento chino / The Tell Tale"

Óleo sobre lienzo / oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm., 2012

Óleo sobre lienzo / oil on canvas, 89 x 130 cm., 2011

«I always wanted to do art, in fact I've always been sketching, drawing or painting even when I was a young boy. For over 6 years now I've been dedicating most of my time to it, I just one day felt the urge to put on canvas this absurd and off the wall universe I was imagining. I thought it would be fun, and indeed it is.»

Óleo sobre lienzo / oil on canvas, 130 x 97 cm., 2010

«I write down all the ideas I have on a notebook, whether good or bad and I sketch most of them, using either a pencil, watercolor or indian ink. One idea usually becomes the central subject for a new painting and I use some of the others to build the surrounding universe. Next step is a sketch on paper to confirm the overall composition. Eventually, I proceed with the actual painting on canvas, which is for me a two-steps process: first, black and white acrylic and then, oil and color.»

Tinta india sobre papel / Indian ink on paper, 80 x 120 cm., 2014

Óleo sobre lienzo / oil on canvas, 97 x 146 cm., 2013

«I arrive quite early at my studio. I sit in front of my latest piece of art with a cup of freshly brewed coffee and take a critical look at the previous day's work, see what works well and what doesn't. I prepare my colors for the day and paint until early evening. Before leaving the studio, I stand again in front of my painting for a better appreciation of the day's work. Then I go home to my family and enjoy a few hours with my babyboy. Once he's in bed, I very often start going through books or surfing the web, it helps stimulate my creativity.»

«Clouds are also important in my universe. I imagine they are made of flesh as well as water.

It’s my way to make them more vulnerable. And this way better understand them. I kind of envy them, their freedom, leisurely existence, the way they are impalpable as opposed to most bound to earth things which are very much solid.»

Óleo sobre lienzo / oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm., 2015

«I guess that the most difficult thing for me is having to answer one very classical and recurring question from the public: "what did you want to say with that painting?". I don't much like the idea to be be the one providing the interpretation of my work because usually then the public only considers this very interpretation I gave which I consider counterproductive. In fact I am looking for the exact opposite phenomena, that each individual makes up their own opinion of what lies behind each painting and share it. It makes for a world of possibilities.

As for loneliness, I believe that being an artist can indeed be somewhat lonely or at least, that one can feel isolated because of it. Most people chose a more “rational” life, and even some of my close friends have a hard time understanding why I chose to do art instead of a more classical full-time employee life. However, every time I think about why I made this choice and how my life would be otherwise, I am more confident that being an artist is the right path for me.»

Barefoot and shirtless, Karim Sawadogo, 9, works with his uncle in a gold mine at Kowekowera mining village, Burkina Faso. He has been to school, but only for a while. "My dream," he says, "is to make enough money so I don't have to do this anymore."

Hermann Waldenburg (Hermann Vogt), German designer, artist and photographer born in 1940 in Waldenburg.

He studied art in Berlin and traveled with a scholarship to Mexico and Central America, where he worked as an artist and exhibited his works. In 1968 he started using the name of his hometown as artistic name.

In 1969-70 he moved to Madrid with a scholarship, entering the Printmaking Workshop of the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where happen to meet a number of artists of many nationalities and creative styles, and where Hermann stood out for his great technical mastery.

In 1973-74 he trained at Villa Massimo in Rome, obtaining the Award of the Federal Republic of Germany in the III International Biennial of Graphic, Florence 1974.

In addition to his work as an artist, Waldenburg is recognized by the photographs of the Berlin Wall he made for years.

He bought a Minolta camera "just to photograph the wall", and did so until 1994 "when images became less interesting." For him, the wall is a very important part of his life, having lived its construction and subsequent fall. Documentation of graffiti made by anonymous artists of the Berlin Wall have enabled him to gather a unique testimony of this ephemeral street art, which has resulted in the book Mauer Kunst - und Objektkunst Graffiti in Berlin from 1989 to 1994.

Larry C. Price, American photojournalist born in 1954 who has won two Pulitzer Prizes: In 1981 in Spot News Photography, recognizing images from Liberia published by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and in 1985 for Feature Photography for images from war-torn Angola and El Salvador published by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

He received a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977. He was a member of The Daily Texan staff during his senior year in college.

His journalism career has spanned three decades. After college, he joined the El Paso Times staff. He then worked on the news staff at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. During that time [1979-1983], Price also was a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

In 1983, he left Fort Worth for The Philadelphia Inquirer to work as a photojournalist and later director of photography. After leaving the Inquirer in 1989, Price worked on contract for National Geographic before returning to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as an assistant managing editor in 1991. In 1996 Price joined The Baltimore Sun photography staff. He was named assistant managing editor for photography for The Denver Post in 2000 where he remained until mid-2006. He is currently an editor for Cox Media Group in Ohio, CMG Ohio operates a converged newsroom that combines the Dayton Daily News, WHIO TV and WHIO Radio.

Richard Harrington, Canadian photographer born in 1911 in Hamburg, Germany.

He is best known for his photographs taken in the Canadian Arctic between 1948 and 1953.

He immigrated to Canada in the mid-1920s. During his career he traveled to more than 100 countries and his photographs have appeared in more than 24 books. His work has been shown at the National Archives of Canada, the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art.

He studied painting and sculpture in Cuba and filmed his first short "Sarna" before leaving for Paris at the age of 20 where he studied Audio Visual Techniques. In 1950 he worked for Henri Langlois director and co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française. This association lead to the foundation of the original Cinemateca de Cuba, officialised as an institution in 1948, and founded by Herman Puig and Ricardo Vigón, which would later be reborn in 1961 with the initiative of Alfredo Guevara and the then newly formed ICAIC as today's Cuba Cinemateca.

From the 60s to the 70s Puig worked in advertising as a photographer and publicity filmmaker in Spain. It was in Madrid that he first started experimenting with male nudes but was arrested in an alleged drugs affair and charged as a pornographer under the climate of the socialist government. It was at this point that he moved to Paris in an attempt to prove to Spain and the world that he was not a pornographer but an artist and was accepted with almost universal acclaim. A little later he moved to Barcelona where he remains to this day.

Herman Puig continues photographing male and female nudes past the age of 80 and was made the subject of a film by David Boisseaux-Chical about his cultural exile from Cuba. In the film he continues to affirm his dislike at being associated with the worlds of pornography and homosexuality, simply for wanting to photograph male bodies as art instead of that of women.

William M. Gallagher, American photographer born in 1923 who won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Photography for his photograph of presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson II. Gallagher was a photographer for 27 years with the Flint Journal in Flint, Michigan.

In 1936 he moved to Flint and graduated from St. Matthew's High School in 1943. During World War II he served in the United States Army in the signal corps, medical corps, and air corps.

Gallagher earned his first camera while in high school by selling magazines. He began his professional photography career with the Sporting Digest in Flint in 1946. The following year he moved to the Flint Journal and within a few months became a staff photographer, a position he would hold until his death. Gallagher's colleagues described him as "a boisterous, flamboyant character" who had good relationships with local police and government officials.

Gallagher snapped his Pulitzer-winning photo at a Labor Day rally in Flint Park. Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson was seated on a platform with Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams. Gallagher, kneeling at the base of the platform, took a photo of Stevenson seated with his legs crossed, which revealed a hole in the bottom of his right shoe.

Alexeï Vassiliev, Russian photographer born in 1959. He lives in France since 1993.

Studied at the Lycée Romain Rolland and the University of the Humanities in Moscow.

Not a very orthodox young Communist – thus not to be trusted – Vassiliev could not become an interpreter, his dream at the time. After two years of military service in the Red Army, including six months with a disciplinary battalion in Siberia, he decided to earn his living working, successively, in television, radio, and then in various factories and on construction sites. In short, the classic trajectory of every Soviet who, without being an outright dissident, refuses to adhere to the official norms.

After the perestroïka, he was finally able to exercise his profession as interpreter; he also translated French mystery novels into Russian.

It was when he arrived in France fourteen years ago that photography entered his life in an altogether fortuitous way. A journalist friend asked him to replace, on the spur of the moment, a photographer who was to accompany her on an assignment. One morning in May 1995 they left for Avignon to interview the Count De Sade and to visit the château where his ancestor, the “divine Marquis,” had lived.

Encouraged to explore, alone and self-taught, almost secretly, the meanders of conceptual photography, this became the experience that changed the course of his life.

John Bulmer, British photographer and filmmaker born in 1938, notable for his early use of colour in photojournalism.

He started photography when young. Although his earliest interest in it was primarily as a technology (he even built his own enlarger), he was a great admirer of Henri Cartier-Bresson as a teenager.

Bulmer studied engineering at Cambridge, where his interest in photography deepened. While still a student he had photographs published in Varsity as well as a magazine he co-founded, Image; and did photostories for the Daily Express, Queen, and Life. He also worked as an assistant to Larry Burrows and Burt Glinn. The Life story led to his expulsion from Cambridge six weeks before his finals.

On his expulsion, Bulmer attempted to get a job with the Daily Express; after three days of repeated attempts, the newspaper gave him one. He stayed for two years. After this he worked on assignments for a number of magazines: first in black and white, for Queen, Town, and Time and Tide.

Thanks in part to a wave of creative people from the north of England, the north was at the time enjoying a vogue in the south. Bulmer's first assignment there was in 1960, for Town, to spend three days photographing the fast-declining Lancashire town of Nelson and compare it with the fast-growing Watford. He found the experience eye-opening and enjoyable.

As we only have one February 29 every four years, we celebrate the anniversaries of three artist and a photograph.

On February 29 is the birthday of

Gilles Francis Charles Bensimon, French fashion photographer born in 1944, and the former International Creative Director of Elle magazine. He has also been the photographer on the reality television series America's Next Top Model.

He had advanced dyslexia so his mother said if he did something in art he could express himself better. Living in Paris, France, he joined French Elle in 1967. Two years later Bensimon helped launch American Elle, for which photographed Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Rachel Williams, Honor Fraser, Yasmin Le Bon, Elle Macpherson, and Beverly Peele.

During his tenure as International Creative Director and Head Photographer of Elle magazine, Bensimon's vision reached an estimated 20 million readers worldwide. He is well known as a celebrity photographer, with a portfolio consisting of leading models and celebrities, including Schiffer, Campbell, Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Nadège du Bospertus, Gisele Bündchen, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sharon Stone, Keira Knightley, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Halle Berry and Uma Thurman. His commercial clients range from Kohl's to Saks Fifth Avenue and Maybelline to Clarins.

He grew up on a ranch in New Mexico and left home at the age of 16. After holding a number of different jobs, he entered dentistry school, but was drafted into the army in 1940. Eventually he entered officer school. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he island-hopped with General Douglas MacArthur and remained in Japan during the occupation.

While Gould held many jobs during his life, including railroad-tie repairer, boxer, aviator, and painter, it was his pursuit of photography that would change his life. For nearly a quarter of a century he practised as a portrait photographer, eventually shifting into fine art photography.

Gould repeatedly asked for the Denver Art Museum to display fine art photography, but director Otto Bach refused to consider the medium. To make artistic photography available to the public, Gould and others created a venue for displaying works directly behind the Denver Art Museum—eventually this would become the gallery Camera Obscura. This is now one of the oldest galleries dedicated exclusively to fine art photography. Gould's gallery gave Sebastião Salgado his first show in America, and has been publishing the Photography in the Fine Arts Quarterly since 1983.

Hercules Florence (Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence), French-Brazilian painter and inventor born in 1804, known as the isolate inventor of photography in Brazil, three years before Daguerre (but six years after Nicéphore Niépce), using the matrix negative/positive, still in use. According to Kossoy, who examined Florence's notes, he referred to his process, in French, as photographie in 1834, at least four years before John Herschel coined the English word photography.

In 1832, with the help of a pharmacist friend, Joaquim Correa de Mello, Florence began to study ways of permanently fixing camera obscura images, which he named "photographia". In 1833, they settled on silver nitrate on paper, a combination which had been the subject of experiments by Thomas Wedgwood around the year 1800. Unlike Wedgwood, who was unable to make photographs of real-world scenes with his camera or render the photograms that he did produce light-fast, Florence's notebooks indicate that he eventually succeeded in doing both. Unfortunately, partly because he never published his invention adequately, partly because he was an obscure inventor living in a remote and undeveloped province, Hércules Florence was never recognized internationally as one of the inventors of photography.

Aircraft 6338, a FE2b belonging to 20 Squadron RFC (Royal Flying Corps) is examined by Uhlans (lancers) from one of the Garde Ulanen or Saxon Ulanen regiments (Royal Prusian Army)

The official records indicated the aircraft was on a reconnaissance mission when it was forced down by enemy aircraft near Menin. The aircraft landed intact and both crewmen were taken prisoner. A Vizefeldwebel Wass claimed the victory, however there is little record of him anywhere in any reference.

This particular aircraft was a presentation aircraft dubbed "Ceylon No 3".

This unique carved marble sculpture of a young woman, bearing a date of 1899, is the most attractive work of the Welsh sculptor Sir W Goscombe John.

It is a masterpiece of the New Sculpture, the movement that breathed new life into British sculpture at the end of the 19th century. A lively surface, an unorthodox pose, as seen in The Elf, are characteristics typical of the period. Love of ‘the body beautiful’ and a frisson of sexuality also place this piece firmly in the liberated era of ‘the Naughty Nineties’.

As a youth assisted his father, Thomas John, a wood carver, in the restoration of Cardiff Castle. He initially studied in his home town, attending the Cardiff School of Art. He went to London in 1882 and studied at the City and Guilds of London Art School (then known as the South London School of Technical Art) under Jules Dalou and William Silver Frith and afterward at the Academy schools, where he won the gold medal and a traveling scholarship in 1887. In 1890–91 he studied in Paris.

Goscombe John was commissioned to design many public monuments and statues of public figures such as the shipping magnate and philanthropist John Cory; John's statue of the latter was erected in front of City Hall, Cardiff. In 1921 he designed the memorial at Port Sunlight to the employees of Lever Brothers Ltd who had died in World War I; he also sculpted portraits of Lord and Lady Lever. He received a gold medal in Paris in 1901, was made a Royal Academician in 1909, was knighted in 1911, and became corresponding member of the French Institute. He settled in Greville Road, Kilburn, London (in a house that had previously belonged to Seymour Lucas)

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, English sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker born in 1882, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.

Working from Ditchling in Sussex, where he lived with his wife, in 1910 Gill began direct carving of stone figures. These included Madonna and Child (1910), which Fry described in 1911 as a depiction of 'pathetic animalism', and Ecstasy (1911). Such semi-abstract sculptures showed Gill's appreciation of medieval ecclesiastical statuary, Egyptian, Greek and Indian sculpture, as well as the Post-Impressionism of Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin.

His first public success was Mother and Child (1912). A self-described "disciple" of the Ceylonese philosopher and art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy, Gill was fascinated during this period by Indian temple sculpture. Along with his friend and collaborator Jacob Epstein, he planned the construction in the Sussex countryside of a colossal, hand-carved monument in imitation of the large-scale Jain structures at Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh, to which he had been introduced by the Indiaphile William Rothenstein.

Gill was named Royal Designer for Industry, the highest British award for designers, by the Royal Society of Arts. He also became a founder-member of the newly established Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry.

He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, and finished his sculptural education in Rome as a grant holder.

He became well-known because of his sculpture The Fallen Angel (El Ángel Caído, 1877), a work inspired by a passage from John Milton's Paradise Lost, and which represents Lucifer falling from Heaven. The sculpture, of great dramatism and originality, obtained the First Medal at the Spanish National Fine Arts Exhibition in 1878, and the same year was cast in bronze for the third Paris World's Fair. Later on, the Prado Museum donated it to the City of Madrid, and in 1885 it was installed in a square with the same name in the Buen Retiro Gardens. For that purpose, architect Francisco Jareño (1818–1892) designed a pedestal of granite, bronze and stone. The success of this work made Bellver been accepted as academician. He was director of the Arts and Works School in Madrid.

Other works of Bellver are in Saint Francis the Great Basilica, Saint Joseph Church, Pontifitial Church of Saint Michael, and Ministry of Public Works building in Madrid.

Hevzi Nuhiu, Albanian sculptor born in 1956 in Carevajkë of Preshevės in the mountains of Karadakut.

In its early years Hevzi Nuhiu attend primary school in his hometown (Carevajkë). He moves to attend secondary school in Preshevės and finished his studies in the Albanian language and Literature Academy in Skopje.

Since 1983 lives and works in San Dometrio Corone, about 500 km from the town of Kozencës, the province where the presence of Albanian settlements is now the largest in Italy.

His sculptures reproduce human figures contorted, far more and more of natural representation of the human body, they become independent organic forms. His reliefs are highly colored.

Fletcher Benton, American sculptor and painter born in Ohio in 1931. He is widely known for his kinetic art as well as his large-scale steel abstract geometric sculptures.

After serving time in the Navy, he graduated from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1956. Thereafter he moved to San Francisco, and began as an instructor at the California College of Arts and Crafts and then went to Europe, traveling by his motorcycle through Scandinavia, Holland, and France; he spent some time in Paris and then in New York and later moved back to San Francisco.

Benton was a part of the Beatnik movement in San Francisco during the ‘50s and ‘60s working as a sign painter by day and an expressionist artist (painting) by night. In 1961, he had a solo exhibition at the California Palace Legion of Honor, showing his portraits of fellow artists like David Simpson and William Morehouse. Frustrated with the limitations of paint on canvas, Benton began to work with movement in geometric pattern pieces and boxes which he was familiar with from his work in commercial signs. This was at the beginning of the kinetic movement; Benton worked largely in isolation, unaware of other efforts of kinetic artists. His early works of this series were exhibited at Gump’s Gallery in San Francisco.

In the late 1970s, he abandoned kinetic art, switching to a more traditional media for sculpture: bronze and steel. These works are designed to be viewed from all angles and have often been characterized as new constructivism; he continues to work in this style today. Some of his most popular series in this style are the Folded Square Alphabets and Numericals, Folded Circle, Donuts, and Steel Watercolors.

Eduardo Arroyo, Spanish painter and graphic artist born in 1937. He is also active as an author and set designer.

He studied art in his home city, but left Spain in 1958 because of his basic contempt for the regime of came to terms with Franco in his old age (Arroyo later described him as a "whore") and even lost his Spanish citizenship in 1974 (which he got back two years later, a year after the death of the Caudillo). In Paris, he befriended members of the young art scene, especially Gilles Aillaud, with whom he later collaborated in creating stage sets, but also the old master, Joan Miró. In 1964, he made his breakthrough with his first important exhibition. Over 20 years of great critical success and high esteem on the art market followed. Today, the ideologically and creatively uncompromising artist is as active as he ever was, even if it seems to have become somewhat quieter around his creations.

Stylistically, Arroyo's mostly ironic, colorful works are at the crossroads between the trends of nouvelle figuration or figuration narrative and pop art. A characteristic of his representations is the general absence of spatial depth and the flattening of perspective.

Arroyo also became known to a broad public through his many works as a set designer, as well as partially by his costume designs.

Arroyo's paintings are showcased at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid.

Alfred Hrdlicka, Austrian sculptor, draughtsman and painter artist born in 1928. His surname is sometimes written Hrdlička.

After learning to be a dental technician from 1943 to 1945, Hrdlicka studied painting until 1952 at the Akademie der bildenden Künste under Albert Paris Gütersloh and Josef Dobrowsky. Afterwards he studied sculpture until 1957 under Fritz Wotruba. In 1960 he had his first exhibition in Vienna; in 1964 he attained international attention as a representative of Austria at the Venice Biennale, Italy.

In 2008, his new religious work about the Apostles, Religion, Flesh and Power, attracted criticism about its homoerotic theme. The exhibition was housed in the museum of the St. Stephen's Cathedral of Vienna.

He taught many sculptors, such as Hans Sailer, Angela Laich and others.

Eugène Delaplanche, French sculptor, born at Belleville (Seine) in 1836.

He was a pupil of Duret, gained the Prix de Rome in 1864 (spending 1864-67 at the Villa Medici in Rome), and the medal of honor in 1878. His "Messenger of Love" (1874), "Aurora" (1878), and the "Virgin of the Lillies" (1884), are in the Luxembourg. Other works by him are "Music" (1878, Paris Opera House), called his masterpiece; "Eve After the Fall" (1869); "Maternal Instruction" (1875, Square of Sainte-Clothilde, Paris); and the statues of "Security" and "Commerce" (1884) in the Hôtel de Ville, Paris (replicas in the Chicago Art Institute). He is also noted for his decorations in relief on vases of Haviland faience. His best work is naturalistic, but at the same time dignified and simple in line, and shows sound mastery of technique. He is represented by 15 works in the Glyptothek, Copenhagen, and in many other French museums and in churches.

As we only have one February 29 every four years, we celebrate the anniversaries of four artists.

On February 29 is the birthday of

Augusta Savage, born Augusta Christine Fells, African-American sculptress born in 1892, associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

She began making clay figures as a child, mostly small animals, but her father would beat her when he found her sculptures. This was because at that time, he believed her sculpture to be a sinful practice, based upon his interpretation of the "graven images" portion of the Bible.

In 1907, Augusta Fells married John T. Moore. Augusta Fells Moore continued to model clay, and applied for a booth at the Palm Beach county fair: the initially apprehensive fair officials ended up awarding her a US$25 prize, and the sales of her art totaled US$175; a significant sum at that time and place.

That success encouraged her to apply to Cooper Union (Art School) in New York City, where she was admitted in October, 1921. During this time she married James Savage; they divorced after a few months, but she kept the name of Savage.

Knowledge of Savage's talent and struggles became widespread in the African-American community; fund-raising parties were held in Harlem and Greenwich Village, and African-American women's groups and teachers from Florida A&M all sent her money for studies abroad. In 1929, with assistance as well from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Savage enrolled and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, a leading Paris art school. In Paris, she studied with the sculptor Charles Despiau. She exhibited and won awards in two Salons and one Exposition. She toured France, Belgium, and Germany, researching sculpture in cathedrals and museums.

Savage returned to the United States in 1931, energized from her studies and achievements. The Great Depression had almost stopped art sales. She pushed on, and in 1934 became the first African-American artist to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.

Savage opened two galleries, whose shows were well attended and well reviewed, but few sales resulted, and the galleries closed. Deeply depressed by the financial struggle, in the 1940s Savage moved to a farm in Saugerties (near Woodstock, New York), where she stayed until 1960.

Adolf Wölfli, Swiss artist born in 1864, who was one of the first artists to be associated with the Art Brut or outsider art label.

He was abused both physically and sexually as a child, and was orphaned at the age of 10. He thereafter grew up in a series of state-run foster homes. He worked as a Verdingbub (indentured child labourer) and briefly joined the army, but was later convicted of attempted child molestation, for which he served prison time. After being freed, he was re-arrested for a similar offense and in 1895 was admitted to the Waldau Clinic, a psychiatric hospital in Bern where he spent the rest of his adult life. He was very disturbed and sometimes violent on admission, leading to him being kept in isolation for his early time at hospital. He suffered from psychosis, which led to intense hallucinations.

At some point after his admission Wölfli began to draw. His first surviving works (a series of 50 pencil drawings) are dated from between 1904 and 1906.

Walter Morgenthaler, a doctor at the Waldau Clinic, took a particular interest in Wölfli's art and his condition, later publishing Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) in 1921 which first brought Wölfli to the attention of the art world.

Morgenthaler's book detailed the works of a patient who seemed to have no previous interest in art and developed his talents and skills independently after being committed for a debilitating condition. In this respect, Wölfli was an iconoclast and influenced the development and acceptance of outsider art, Art Brut and its champion Jean Dubuffet.

Wölfli produced a huge number of works during his life, often working with the barest of materials and trading smaller works with visitors to the clinic to obtain pencils, paper or other essentials.

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, known as Balthus, Polish-French modern artist born in 1908.

Throughout his career, Balthus rejected the usual conventions of the art world. He insisted that his paintings should be seen and not read about, and he resisted any attempts made to build a biographical profile.

In his formative years his art was sponsored by Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Pierre Matisse. His father, Erich Klossowski, a noted art historian who wrote a monograph on Daumier, and his mother, Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro (known as the painter Baladine Klossowska), were part of the cultural elite in Paris. Among the visitors and friends of the Klossowskis were famous writers such as André Gide and Jean Cocteau, who found some inspiration for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929) in his visits to the family.

In 1921 Mitsou, a book which included forty drawings by Balthus, was published. It depicted the story of a young boy and his cat, with a preface by Balthus's mentor, the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) who at the time was his mother's lover.

Balthus's style is primarily classical. His work shows numerous influences, including the writings of Emily Brontë, the writings and photography of Lewis Carroll, and the paintings of Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Simone Martini, Poussin, Jean-Étienne Liotard, Joseph Reinhardt, Géricault, Ingres, Goya, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Courbet, Edgar Degas, Félix Vallotton and Paul Cézanne. Although his technique and compositions were inspired by pre-renaissance painters, there also are eerie intimations of contemporary surrealists like de Chirico. Painting the figure at a time when figurative art was largely ignored, he is widely recognised as an important 20th-century artist.

Many of his paintings show young girls in an erotic context. Balthus insisted that his work was not erotic but that it recognized the discomforting facts of children's sexuality. In 2013, Balthus's paintings of adolescent girls were described by Roberta Smith in the New York Times as both "alluring and disturbing".

Leo von Klenze (Franz Karl Leopold von Klenze) German neoclassicist architect, painter and writer born in 1784. Court architect of Bavarian King Ludwig I, he was one of the most prominent representatives of Greek revival style.

He studied architecture and public building finance under Friedrich Gilly in Berlin, and worked as an apprentice to Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine in Paris. Between 1808 and 1813 he was a court architect of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. Later he moved to Bavaria and in 1816 began to work as court architect of Ludwig I. The King's passion for Hellenism shaped the architectural style of von Klenze. He built many neoclassical buildings in Munich, including the Ruhmeshalle and Monopteros temple. On Königsplatz he designed probably the best known modern Hellenistic architectural ensemble. Near Regensburg he built the Walhalla temple, named after Valhalla, the home of gods in Norse mythology.

When Greece won its independence, Ludwig I's son Otto became the country's first king. Von Klenze was invited to Athens to submit plans of city reconstruction in the style of Ancient Greece. Russian Emperor Nicholas I commissioned von Klenze in 1838 to design a building for the New Hermitage, a public museum that housed the Romanov collection of antiquities, paintings, coins and medals, cameos, prints and drawings, and books. Prior to this, von Klenze had also designed and arranged museum galleries in Munich, including the Glyptothek, Ludwig I's museum for antique sculpture, and the Alte Pinakothek, a painting gallery for the pictures of the Wittelsbach collection.

Von Klenze was not only an architect, but also an accomplished painter and draughtsman. In many of his paintings ancient buildings were depicted. Those served as models for his own architectural projects. Klenze studied ancient architecture during his travels to Italy and Greece. He also participated in excavations of ancient buildings in Athens and submitted projects for the restoration of the Acropolis.

This is an open art blog, so you could find images eventually offensive or umconfortable.

If you're an artist and find here images of your art you want to be removed, just tell me and I'll do it immediately. I try to ask for permission always if artist is alive and there's a way to contact, bot not always is possible and there are things I think worth to be known.

In any case, the copyrights of all the images contained in this blog, except where noted, belong to the artists or the legal owners of such rights, and have been published nonprofit and for the only purpose of make the works known to the general public.

Enjoy "El Hurgador", make any comment you like (respecting artists, other visitors and myself), make suggestions, critics, leave your opinions and make your contributions. Always welcome.